What Type of Pitcher *Can't* Succeed Against the A's?
by monkeyball on Jul 28, 2007 4:46 PM PDT
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PrintDispiriting as last night's result was, it's at least understandable and acceptable. King Felix is rapidly evolving into one of the elite power pitchers in the league. It's a credit to Swisher that he was able to get around on one in the first.
But when a pitcher like HoRam sidles up, straw in his teeth, thumb hooked in his overalls, and slings a bucket of slop at the A's, and we're unable to punish him for it, I gnash my teeth and wail in anguish.
Relying solely on my imperfect recall of the radio broadcast, I'd like to connect one Ken Korach comment, and one Korach call, from today's game:
Somewhere around the top of the fifth inning: "You know, talking to Ty Van Burkleo, if you're going to look for an offspeed pitch, you have to really commit to it for the entire at-bat."
Top of the eighth inning: "Johnson -- strike three looking, right down the middle."
Now, in the abstract, I'm a big defender of the principles of plate discipline and waiting for a pitch you can drive. Those are time-honored, Ted Williams-tested and -approved methodologies in the science of hitting.
However, what we seem to have with these Athletics batters is an obstinate institutional agenda to hew to ideological precepts at the expense of facts and conditions on the ground.
I certainly wouldn't advocate the Mariners' team approach -- they made Gaudin seem much, much better than he actually was today. Despite the accolades by the A's announcers, Gaudin was mostly fortunate that the Mariners were so impatient. A more disciplined team, willing to wait for Gaudin to walk a few batters and then pounce on the flattening-out sliders and hung/mislocated pitches would probably have knocked in 7 or 8 runs and increased Gaudin's pitch count by 50%.
The A's seem to have a rigorous program of avoiding pitch-to-pitch adjustments -- and this discourages real adjustments at-bat to at-bat, in favor of the interminable wait for the ideal pitch -- with the exception of the shrinking handful of gritty veterans who are allowed/encouraged to go off-message and swing early in the count, despite their almost total absence of power.
The A's, rather than jumping on mistake pitches, overchallenge themselves by demanding the perfectly imperfect pitch.
It's almost as if the A's have esoterically refined their offense to succeed not against league-average pitchers, or below-league-average pitchers, but against AAA league-average pitchers.
There's a sense in which designing your offense to succeed against the largest possible pool of likely opposing pitchers (observing the talent-distribution laws of the bell curve) is logical: over the course of a season, the team will likely face far more ABs against mediocre pitchers than against great ones.
But for whatever reason, this approach is not working for the A's.
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Wow.
Tell you how you really feel :-).
Didn't get to see the game, but that box score line for Gaudin looked awfully good, except for the home runs.
It's still a big except
It means he's either a walker or a longball pitcher now
by oaklandSMASH on Jul 28, 2007 5:13 PM PDT up reply actions
Gaudin's just not that good
... yet.
And the Mariners are just that jumpy.
It's almost as if they had NO scouting report on Gaudin, and expected him to be consistently in or at the edges of the strike zone.
Excellent write up.
What you say makes a lot of sense. Oh, and we do suck. Watching Tejada play right now. I remember when we didn't suck. I miss Miggy. Hell, I miss Eric Byrnes.
I don't miss Eric Byrnes
But I certaintly want whoever the hell that is in Arizona playing with his uniform on.
(perhaps the greatest american hero found his instruction booklet)
10, actually. You're reading the individual...
...player LOB stats, not the team stat for the end of each inning.
Gameday and ohtobe- Guilty of 21 LOB comment.
by ohtobe21likehuston on Jul 28, 2007 8:41 PM PDT up reply actions
Jeff Weaver
by 3Chavy3 on Jul 28, 2007 6:55 PM PDT reply actions
If a pitcher knows
that the batter is sitting on one pitch, then ... if he refuses to throw him that pitch, he greatly increases the probability that he'll get that guy out.
Is that right?
by Checkswing HR on Jul 28, 2007 7:07 PM PDT reply actions
the summer has come to this:
- The current state of the team...enough said.
- Crummy Giant games televised for each tortuous at bat by Bonds.
I Listened
...on my computer, because *&HH%%$###$@@!! MLB TV is blacked out on Saturdays, for no good reason as far as I can see. Seems to me we have to get rid of Dan Johnson---he just can't do it. If some team wants him, let him go. It doesn't matter if we get a little back---Barton awaits. I also think Cust has finally lost his magic touch. We do indeed suck---but maybe only for this year. I like Murphy. A lot. Barton's coming up. We'll be exciting again, and soon.
I don't know if Cust is legit,
but Billy needs to figure this out soon, and if Cust is another Shelton, then, heck, Billy should try to re-sign Piazza through the end of '08.
by Checkswing HR on Jul 28, 2007 8:17 PM PDT up reply actions
It seems to me that opposing pitchers
know three things when it comes to Cust. He strikes out a lot. He will walk if given the chance. If you screw up, he will take you deep. The only real unknown factor about him is which of the three particular ruts he is in at any given time. Is this why he appears most effective when he is protected by Piazza?
Armando Benitez
Could very well be a good wrestler in SF, he sure knows how to draw the HEAT.
"Adjustments,
Adjustments? We don't need no stinkin' adjustments!!!"
We haven't made any all year, what makes you think they'll start now?!
?
What you are saying, if the A's are tailored for AAA pitching, is not that the A's are tailored for the largest possible pool, but for the bottom half of the distribution, right? Tailored for the largest possible pool would be the best possible offense, since it would be able to handle the entire distribution (i.e., it would be at the far end of the offensive distribution). So being tailored for mediocre pitching doesn't equal tailoring for a largest pool, but only for a small sliver, which is why we suck.
by Slurve on Jul 28, 2007 11:59 PM PDT reply actions
Your last few sentences are apt.
It's almost as if the A's have esoterically refined their offense to succeed not against league-average pitchers, or below-league-average pitchers, but against AAA league-average pitchers.
There's a sense in which designing your offense to succeed against the largest possible pool of likely opposing pitchers (observing the talent-distribution laws of the bell curve) is logical: over the course of a season, the team will likely face far more ABs against mediocre pitchers than against great ones.
Almost every hitter on this team isn't the kind of hitter that succeeds against the opposition's best hitter. They tend to profit from a pitcher's mistakes. We need more guys who can get hits against tough competition, not guys who will walk if you let them, or get a hit if you leave a pitch up.
I agree that we need some better hitters
... but (and as my meandering throughline in my writeup demonstrated, I'm still thinking through this whole thing) it's starting to seem to me almost as if Beane actually thinks the batters on this team are worse than they actually are, and that his desperately oversimplified batting scheme is all that saves them from all hitting like Kendall.
Don't get me wrong: I said at the beginning of the season that this roster was a collection of underimpressive bats, and I still hold to that. But these guys are all pretty strong, with better bat speed and raw power than their ISO would indicate.
In short, I think they're being overcoached under a system that believes more in its inherent rightness than in their individual batting skills.
Interesting Analysis
I don't know if ultimately you're right or wrong about the organization's hitting philosophy --- but I'm getting awfully sick and tired of watching so many batters get called third strikes down the middle. Johnson's the worst --- it seems like the only time he ever gets a hit is if he swings at the first pitch. After that, he's afraid to move the bat from his shoulder. And we're seeing this up and down the A's line-up. I think the A's figured out that if an opposing pitcher knows you're not swinging at the first pitch ever, then every at-bat starts with an 0-1 count. Thus A's batters are now allowed (encouraged?) to swing at good first pitches. But after that, it's patience, patience, patience. The result is a lot of walks, but those runners don't score because the next batter strikes out looking.
I agree that theoretically such approaches look good, but they're easily countered by opposing teams and in the long run create high OBPs, high strike out rates, and very few hits or runs. And they're really really boring.
by richwol on Jul 29, 2007 12:48 PM PDT up reply actions
yeah, I honestly think I could be 100% wrong
I just don't know.
It does, though, seem as if when we bring rookies up, they do more of jeepers' "see ball, hit ball" (which is to say, see strike, hit strike) -- witness Suzuki's early power binge, and Murphy's bases-juiced 2B yesterday -- and then once they get conditioned by the environment, they start taking more strikes.
I'm also beginning to suspect that the one A for whom the organizational approach is most destructive is Crosby -- by definition, the pitch that Crosby can drive the hardest is the fastball on the inner third of the plate ... so he gears everything in his PAs to looking for and swinging at that pitch, so he's utterly unprepared for anything else, and is prone to misrecognize other pitches (say a slide breaking down and away but that starts toward the middle of the plate) as that pitch.
The problem is in the process
The A's want hitters who can work the count and drive the ball. They want hitters who'll mash strikes. Yet they expect their hitters, especially their minor league hitters, to draw a certain number of walks. Walks lead to promotions. (Taken straight out of Moneyball folks.)
Plate discipline and drawing walks are two seperate things. Yes they're related but they are not the same. The walk seems to have become the desired result now which is not what the A's intended. They wanted their batters to be able to recognize a ball and be willing to take four balls for the walk if the pitcher wasn't willing/able to throw a strike. If the pitcher threw a strike the A's expected the hitter to crush the ball.
Jason Giambi, even before the steroids, was the ideal A's hitter because he understood this concept. He'd take a walk, but he was always looking for a pitch he could drive. I don't think the current crop of hitters has that same approach.
This is probably the result of the original message being warped in the farm system. The front office doesn't notice the disconnect because they look at the stats and see that so and so is drawing their walks, therefore things must be going OK. But what's really happening is that the hitters are working towards achieving the wrong result.
excellent, excellent points
Walk rate requirement for promotion
I don't think the A's are adhering to the 1 BB per 10 AB guideline mentioned in Moneyball anymore, if it was ever a hard rule. Javier Herrera was promoted from Stockton to Midland with a lesser walk rate.
I think it's the players chosen way more than the
approach. It also said in Moneyball that they had tried to teach patience, but that it can't really be done. I think the walk/promotion requirement (even they even still do that) is more about seeing signs that they're ready than about giving them incentives for improvement.
I think what the low BAs has to do with the walk-drawing is that "patience" is only half of what it takes to draw walks. The other half is missing a lot when you swing. Swisher and Cust (especially Swisher) have good eyes, but the main reason they walk so much, and the reason they will always be low BA, high K guys is that when they swing they usually don't put the ball in play. And when the FO tries to acquire guys that will draw a lot of BBs, you wind up with guys who do a lot of swinging and missing.
The A's approach by and large actually is "be patient but always look for a pitch you can drive," and that's what most of them actually do. What they don't do (and what Giambi could do) is hit pitcher's pitches. With the current batch of A's, I don't think the problem is so much the approach as the fact that they just aren't the sort of hitters who can hit those good pitches.
Finally, the biggest problem, which is sometimes forgotten, is that they've had several guys this year who just flat out suck (Kendall, Croz, Kotsay). Those 3 all have significantly different approaches. The rest of the squad is certainly no juggernaut, but they are also not the problem.
Let's take talent out of the equation...
Really nowhere to go with that, is there?
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